DAILY UPDATE ~ Loch Garten nest ~ Monday, 22 May 2017

I've not posted before about the decision made about Intervention or not but suspect that much of the decision must be about the amount of intervention required. When they provided fish to EJ a few years ago & Dyfi helped out at their nest following the floods, it was effectively a one off piece of assistance.

This year they could have put out fish for EJ, but given the number of intruders most of this would probably have been stolen, and given that they would have had to feed for several months, more intruders are likely to have been encouraged into the area by the free food, making feeding EJ almost impossible.

The other option would be to try and remove the chicks & hand rear them. When chicks are removed from the nest for translocation they are 6 weeks old & able to feed themselves. I don't know if chicks this young have ever been hand reared (those with more knowledge on the US scene would no doubt have more information), but I do know that Ospreys generally react very badly in captivity & hand rearing Chicks this young would have been very difficult, if not impossible.

It was obviously their decision to make & would obviously accept whatever choices they made, but suspect this was the correct one.

Alarm chirps.

scylla said:

here's the male back again

The only one I could find not already covered :)

Then this other flying intruder:

.

Continued network problems, I'm OFF!

Starling said:

Two well known webcams have been closed already and sooner or later more will follow.   

Anyone choosing to criticise the RSPB in this most difficult of situations should consider what might happen if they pulled the plug.